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“Nooooo!” Broderick wailed against the agony ripping his soul to shreds. The metal cuffs dug into his straining muscles.
Cailin screeched and—miraculously absolved of her ropes—ran past Rick.
He howled as he wrenched his hand through the cuff, scraping off a layer of skin. He tried to catch his daughter, but she slipped through his fingers. Her necklace snagged on his pinkie and snapped free.
Cailin sprinted toward her mother. Broderick stared at the dangling amulet in his fist, mouth agape, lifted his gaze and locked onto Korban, standing at the edge of the room.
Silence descended. Deafening and stark.
Korban clutched Broderick’s hand, holding the Heart of Terror, the mage panting and wide-eyed.
Broderick glanced past Korban to find Cailin fixed, her arms outstretched and grief distorting her lovely face. The perfect orb of a tear hung suspended two inches from her cheek, and the rest of scene was in a similar state of frozen animation. Like a 3D action movie on pause.
Satan still wore Judas’s skin, Davina’s arched body clutched in his massive hand and the ritual stake protruding from her heart. The bastard’s face was twisted in a mixture of rage and glee, but remained stock-still like everyone and everything else.
Broderick attempted to tug out of Korban’s grasp, but the Time Tailor held tight. “What—”
“Don’t! You’re only with me because we’re touching. Let go, and time will resume for you.”
Broderick swallowed his grief and flared his nostrils. “Where the fuck were ye?”
“This isn’t over.” Korban stared at the necklace. “We hold something we’ve never had before. I wonder...”
His grip tightened, and he gently pulled the necklace loose, wrapping his fingers around the glimmering stone and setting.
He released Broderick.
Time remained frozen.
Korban breathed a sigh of relief and grinned. “It’s true. This is the Heart of Terra. Oops, I almost forgot.” He yanked out his smart phone and tapped the glass a few times before returning it to his back pocket.
Broderick seized Korban’s gullet. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t squeeze until yer eyes pop. Where the fuck have ye been?” Tears dripped from his chin.
Korban choked and clawed at Broderick’s hand. “Let me...,” he rasped. “I can...save Davina.”
Broderick dropped the Time Tailor, who panted and coughed, hunched over with the necklace wrapped around the hand at his throat. Rearing back, Korban gave one more good cough and ran his palm down the stubble on his face.
But the last time Rick had seen Korban in the alley, he’d been clean shaven. The man looked positively beaten in spirit and body.
“Ye’d better make it good, lad.” Broderick laced his fingers above his head, wrestling with the desire to rip Korban apart. His worst nightmare had just come true and now that they were in a time lock, he was certain it could have been prevented. The only thing he wanted to do was curl into a ball and die.
“This will change the outcome.” His voice hoarse, he held up the amulet. Korban waved his other hand at the heartbreaking and ghastly scene.
Broderick gritted his teeth. He needed to put his grief aside to hear him out. “Cailin called it the Heart o’ Terror.”
Clearing his throat, Korban nodded, though his words were still grating and rough. “In the wrong hands, it most certainly can be...and thus it has earned such a reputation. But if used correctly, it can work miracles.” Korban sat on the padded chair Cailin had vacated and rubbed his throat. “It’s the miracle I’ve been looking for to stop this apocalypse.”
“Apocalypse?” Broderick absorbed Korban’s haggard appearance once more. The man looked as if he hadn’t slept in weeks. “Ye mean this is how the wrath o’ God will be unleashed? We did all this fer nothin’?”
Korban shook his head. “I’ve been told this isn’t supposed to happen. And yet I’ve relived these last few hours more times than I care to remember. I think this is somewhere around...trip forty-two? As I told you before, some things in time cannot be changed.”
“Sorry, but we haven’t had that conversation. I only just learned what ye can do less than an hour ago.”
Korban paused, seeming to replay the evening in his mind. “Dammit, that’s right. Okay, let’s try this again.” He bounced the amulet in his palm. “As long as I hold this, we have all the time in the world.” A cough rattled in his chest, and he glanced around. “Ah.”
He scuttled to the bar at the back of the room and grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator, half of which he sucked down in three gulps. “Know this—not everything can be changed with a trip back in time. It was a hard lesson I had to learn through the loss of my wife. I’m not going to expound on the details but, suffice to say, no matter what I did with the limited ability to travel back and correct a single mistake, the same outcome manifested itself in another way.”
“What do ye mean?” Broderick’s patience was growing thin, but since time was on their side, he’d cut the mage some slack.
“She stepped off a curb and got hit by a bus right in front of me.” Korban paced, occasionally sipping from the bottle. “But if she didn’t get hit, another car took her out or she tripped and suffered a fatal blow to her head. There were any number of grisly ways I saw her die within the thirty minutes of saving her.”
Guilt pricked Broderick’s conscience. “Sorry, lad. I didna mean to—”
“That’s not the point.” Korban swatted Rick’s comment away. “It’s the same thing here. No matter how many times I’ve tried to redo these moments, we always end up in the same place. Here, with Jesse, and this.” He pointed to Satan just having driven a stake into Davina’s heart.
Broderick cringed and turned his back to the horror. “What does the amulet have to do with any o’ this? What, exactly, is it?”
Korban set the water on the chair and held up the stone, demonstrating its iridescent shimmer. “It’s literally a piece of the Heart of Terra, the Goddess of the Elementals. She created us to be guardians of the Earth. In order to aid us in our near-impossible task to watch over humankind, she pinched a small piece of her heart from her breast and gave it to her elves. They’re heavenly beings, much like Jehovah’s angels. They forged the necklace by using their skills and magic.”
Broderick studied the luminescent gem. “So, what can it do?”
“It magnifies my powers...the powers of any Elemental who touches it. I’ve spent my entire life looking for this amulet. It’s been missing since the sixteenth century and now I know why.”
“James and Cailin.”
“That’s right. And this proves some things are meant to happen. I couldn’t figure out why James and Cailin were here. Now I know. This...” He shook his fist, holding the Heart of Terra. “This is the very key to unraveling this horrible fabric woven in time. You and I can change the outcome.” He glared at Satan. “We can correct this mistake before it happens.”
“But ye have the mirror. Why not use it to fix this just like ye used it to save Christine?”
“That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do since I learned it was here in this time.” Korban threw his hands up in exasperation. “My job as an archaeologist is to recover the relics associated with the Elementals. The mirror is another of those relics and somehow lost in time. Again, now I know why and where it became lost. With James and Cailin.”
“So, ye’ve been using it ever since ye learned about it at the Army o’ Light?”
“A bit later, but yes.”
“Well, that explains a lot. I thought I’d gone mental, seeing ye with five o’clock shadow one moment and cleanshaven the next. That toothpick on one side o’ yer mouth and, in a blink, on the other.” Rick shook his head and wiped his face to clear the debris of confusion. “That was you popping in and out of time, trying to fix things. Not just using yer powers to stop and start time as I had originally thought. Bloody hell.”
“When I first saw the mirror, I didn’t dare use it at all. I went through the journey in a slightly different way, following the events until I came to the moment Satan used Judas’s body as a doorway into this world. I didn’t dare try to manipulate time because something this grand, I assumed, was supposed to happen. So, I continued as a witness and saw the devastating outcome. I saw Satan take over the world and turn all humanity into slaves. I saw the war between God and Satan. I can’t even begin to describe the atrocities, the genocide, the hopelessness. This is truly the beginning of the apocalypse mentioned in the Bible.”
Korban plopped onto the chair once again, hands trembling as he picked up the water and his eyes reflecting whatever terrors he’d beheld. “One of Terra’s elves visited me and said this was not meant to be, but I needed to see it before I was told. Terra’s message was that I use my abilities and tools to fix the problem, that it would be my greatest challenge.” Korban barked a sardonic laugh. “That, my friend, was an understatement. No matter where I went back...no matter what I did to make subtle changes, we always ended up here. Different people died or lived, or just died in different ways, but nothing allowed me to stop this disaster. Nothing, until now.”
Broderick sat on the end table closest to Korban, elbows resting on his knees and leaning into the conversation with renewed hope. “The amulet. That’s what will make the difference? Had ye not seen it before?”
“No, never. The first two dozen trips, I kept trying to protect everyone, redirecting their paths to avoid danger. Unfortunately, that only made everything worse. So, I took the opposite approach and purposely put people in harm’s way. I got better results. Less people died, but there were still casualties and, above all, Satan still won. I finally figured out that writing letters and making subtle suggestions to select people was the key to saving everyone. Well, almost everyone. We lost a lot of people at the AoL headquarters.” He sighed his grief. “If I gave people just enough information to make the right choices, the main players seemed to make it through alive...at least, right up until the moment we entered this room.”
No wonder the man was so disheveled. Broderick leaned back in awe. The shocking events and responsibility of trying to change them must have been overwhelming. And yet Korban was determined to finish his task.
What can I do to help? “Should we avoid this buildin’ at all costs?”
“I thought so, too, but the apocalypse still happens. Judas is killed and Satan still uses the absence of his soul as a doorway into this world. By the way, that was the big explosion when Judas was stabbed with the stake.
“The original plan was for Satan to use Judas’s body way back when he was first created. That’s why he lied to Judas about becoming the father of a new nation. It was a trick so Judas would agree to giving his body and soul to Satan. But Jehovah pulled a double whammy. He allowed Satan’s words to create the reality of his lie and thereby father a race of vampires. Knowing it would trap human souls within their immortal bodies, Jehovah also wanted to give those people an out. So, he invented the prophecy and set some conditions to becoming a vampire.”
The mage screwed the cap back onto the bottle, the amulet’s chain snaked around his fingers and the stone cradled safely in his palm. “Unbeknownst to Satan, the thirty pieces of silver Judas was paid to betray Jesus became the binding element of the contract. That and Judas’s blood. Satan didn’t know it at the time, but if those coins were melted into a stake, it could be used to destroy Judas, as well as the contract and Satan’s chance at entering this world. This is why silver is harmful to vampires. It represents the contract and those coins.”
Broderick harrumphed. “No shit?”
“No shit. Killing Judas meant Satan would lose his race of immortals, so when he learned the coins could kill Judas, he had them scattered and gave one each to Jesse and Judas, to ensure they would never be melted unless they were together.”
“God’s blood.” The pieces of the past finally fell into place for Broderick. “That’s why Malloren was tasked with finding the Star o’ Bethlehem...the one thing that could locate the coins and thereby create the weapon.”
“That’s right. In response, Satan found a loophole in the prophecy, and ordered the stake could only be created with a special mold and using Kahli’s magic.”
“And Jesse knew this?”
“Yep. Satan told Jesse that none of this could happen without the powers of a Spirit Elemental, and that’s why Terra got involved.” Korban stabbed an accusatory finger at Satan. “He deliberately dipped his hands into the cookie jar of another god’s realm, and I can tell you, there’s no quicker way to piss off a god than to use their powers without permission. Especially the Mother of Earth.”
Though Broderick was aware of other gods and realms, he’d never thought of the boundaries they may set within their magic. “The stake and Kahli’s magic created the doorway, then?”
“The symbols and markings combined with her powers obliterated Judas’s spirit, leaving his body absent of a soul while still barely alive. Satan had a narrow margin of error, but the symbols on the stake and her power ensured the doorway stayed open long enough for him to use it. Jesse was tricked. He gave Satan access to this world, and the chance to unleash his anger on Jehovah and his children.”
Broderick frowned. “Yer saying if we avoid this room or this buildin’—”
Korban counted off on his fingers. “Or get the stake away from Jesse, or tell him what’s about to happen, or bring him back in time, or into the future to show him...” He threw his head back and sighed. “Great Terra, those were the worst outcomes, next to Kahli being set free. She brought down the whole building, killing everyone in her grief over losing Angus. Everyone except Satan, of course. But none of it worked. Either no one believed me because they had their own agendas, or Jesse twisted everything to suit his needs.”
“Then what made the difference?” Broderick scratched his chin. “What did ye do different this time?”
“Cailin.” Korban swept his arm toward her leaping figure. “It was her turn to be set free. Like I said, each time I put someone different in harm’s way. So far, I’d released you, James, Kahli, and everyone else. This time, it was Cailin’s turn, and she brought about an unexpected outcome. When she saw her mother die, she ran past you and you tore your hands through the cuffs.”
Broderick nodded. “I thought I’d Davina, and my little girl was all I had left of her. I couldn’t bear to lose her, too.”
Korban’s hand met Broderick’s shoulder. “You tried to grab her and the timing was perfect. You snagged the necklace and that one small change revealed the answer.”
Broderick rose to his feet. “If it magnifies yer powers, then how will it make the change we need?”
“I honestly don’t have a clue. But, in my gut, I know this is the answer. I’ve tried everything else. It has to work.”
“So, how do ye want to do this?” Broderick put his fists on his hips.
Korban chomped on his toothpick as if pondering a variety of scenarios. “Everything goes well until we arrive at the building. During each trip, I’ve been keeping track of how long it’s been since I left you and Angus in the alley.” He produced his smart phone and tapped the glass. “Wow, thirty minutes. Jesse was a little more long-winded than usual.” He returned his phone to his pocket. “Normally, when I’ve taken someone for short trips back in time, not only have they not remembered the rewind, they go back to the same spot they were before. Time and space for them doesn’t change no matter what I do. In such cases, I can only go back about twenty minutes, max. And that’s pushing the limits of my pain tolerance and the stress on the fabric of time.”
Broderick’s head was spinning, but he kept his questions to himself until Korban explained everything.
“If my assumptions are correct, using the amulet will allow me to go back further in time, but I don’t know how much. And you may be aware of the rewind and that might be all we need. It’s not like the mirror, where there will be two instances of someone in time. Since I’m reversing to the point when you and I were in the alley with Angus and Mikhail, we should be able to tell immediately if you remember what happened. Let’s hope that’s enough. If not, worst-case scenario, we can always use the amulet to bring more people into the time freeze, but let’s keep it simple at first, shall we?”
“Ha. Simple.” Broderick shuddered. “Yer the expert. Though I’ve been completely ignorant of everythin’ ye’ve done so far, I have to trust yer doing what’s best.”
“Okay, cool. Do you have any questions?”
“So many I don’t even know where to start.” Rick scrubbed his head. “How about, what do ye need me to do?”
“Just hold my hand.” Korban smiled around his wooden sliver and held up the Heart of Terra.
Broderick grabbed it, the stone caught between their palms, and locked eyes with the Time Tailor. “Ready.”
Korban inhaled deep and squeezed Rick’s fingers.
The scene before him moved backward as if their lives were being rewound on a DVD, unraveling a half-hour of devastation and death. After several moments, Broderick, Angus, Korban and Mikhail were back in the alley behind the dumpsters.
Broderick reeled, spun and slapped his palm to the brick wall. He bent and vomited beside a pile of black trash bags.
“Oh, man.” Korban patted Rick’s back. “Sorry. I forgot that happened to me the first trip I rewound on my own.”
Angus clutched his throat, pale and awestruck. “I just had a vision Jesse cut off me head.”